Robert Patton (pic­tured), the direc­tor of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections who over­saw the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett, the use of the wrong third drug in the exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner, and the failed exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip, was also involved in a num­ber of Arizona exe­cu­tions that vio­lat­ed that state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, a BuzzFeed investigation revealed. 

Lockett was Oklahoma’s first exe­cu­tion under Patton, just two months after he became cor­rec­tions direc­tor. For the pre­vi­ous five years, he was part of the team that planned and over­saw exe­cu­tions in Arizona. A 2011 depo­si­tion giv­en by Patton in a fed­er­al court chal­lenge to Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col dis­closed sim­i­lar fail­ures to adhere to state execution protocols. 

BuzzFeed reports that, three years before the Lockett exe­cu­tion, Patton had been involved in sev­er­al Arizona exe­cu­tions in which cor­rec­tions per­son­nel could not find an arm vein suit­able for exe­cu­tion and instead, as in Lockett’s exe­cu­tion, insert­ed the IV into an artery in the exe­cut­ed pris­on­er’s groin. In direct vio­la­tion of Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, the exe­cu­tion­ers cov­ered the IV with a sheet, risk­ing that offi­cials would be unable to detect prob­lems with the IV.

In inves­ti­gat­ing the Lockett case, the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety found that the same devi­a­tion from Oklahoma’s pro­to­col pre­vent­ed exe­cu­tion­ers from dis­cov­er­ing prob­lems with the IV until Lockett began to move dur­ing the exe­cu­tion, at which point prison per­son­nel dis­cov­ered clear liq­uid and blood under the sheet and noticed that Lockett had swelling ​“between the size of a golf ball and ten­nis ball” at the IV inser­tion site. Patton then called off the exe­cu­tion, but Lockett died 45 min­utes after the execution began. 

In his 2011 depo­si­tion, Patton admit­ted that he nev­er checked the forms that iden­ti­fied which drugs and what amounts of those drugs were to be used in Arizona exe­cu­tions. In January 2015, using the wrong third drug in its three-drug pro­to­col, Oklahoma exe­cut­ed Charles Warner. An inves­ti­ga­tion into that exe­cu­tion is ongo­ing, and state offi­cials have not said who was aware at the time that the wrong drug was being used. The state also halt­ed the exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip in September when prison offi­cials became aware two hours before the exe­cu­tion that they had obtained the same wrong drug.

(C. McDaniel, ​“Execution Mistakes Followed Corrections Director From Arizona To Oklahoma,” BuzzFeed, November 11, 2015.) See Lethal Injection.

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